Nowadays even modern education teaches people from a young age that everything that we see around us happened perchance. Srila Prabhupada cannot see the sense in this and criticizes it very scientifically in the following conversation with his disciples.
Pradyumna: You said in one place, "Man is the architect of his own happiness and distress."
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes. That is an axiomatic truth even by the modern man. Yes that, "Man is the architect of his own fortune." So as soon as there is work to make your fortune, then there must be a person to decide to give you a fortunate position. Just like in an establishment, so many men are working, but there is a president. He is considering the work file, "How this man has worked?" And he is being promoted, his salary is being increased; and somebody is degraded, no promotion, rather, transferred in some other place.
So natural conclusion is when there are so many varieties of life in our presence, and they are, although in the same place, they haven't got the same facility, so there must be somebody who decides on this point. So how you can deny God? Our point is the Supreme Person, the president, who decides on this fact, He is God. What is the opposite answer?
Pradyumna: They would say that you are in your position and they are in their position just by chance, just like . . .
Prabhupada: That is nonsense. This is sheer nonsense. There is nothing by chance. What is that chance? By chance one is becoming millionaire, and a chance, one is becoming cockroaches. What is that chance? Explain that chance. It is evasive. It is most foolish reply, "Chance." We have got this nice apartment. Is it by chance?
Pradyumna: No.
Prabhupada: Then?
Bhurijana: There's never an example of chance.
Prabhupada: This is all nonsense. People are befooled by all this philosophy.
Bhurijana: Albert Einstein, he said that, "I cannot believe that the highest material principle is chance." He's a material scientist. He said: "I cannot believe."
Prabhupada: Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. Actually, if one is actually learned, scientific, he must admit. He must admit, unless he is a lunatic, rascal. He will say all these nonsense things, "Chance." Why chance? What is taking place within your practical experience by chance? If by prearrangement we would not come here, then who would care for it? Even on the street we could not lie down. Nobody allow. The police will arrest: "Who are these men?" How do you say chance?
Everything is done by prearrangement. The chance is an explanation given by the rascals and fools. They are not sane men. There cannot be anything by chance. We got up on the train, and the train is running, and it is all chance? There is a huge management behind the train. Therefore we are comfortably seated, and we come to the destination right in the time. All these are chances? What is that . . .? He has written such a big book. What is his reason that chance? What reason he has given? I have not read. You have read?
Pradyumna: No.
Syamasundara: Well, necessity . . . necessity . . .
Prabhupada: Necessity means I arrange. There was a necessity to come to this city, so he arranged. So how it is chance?
Syamasundara: They would . . . their answer is that there was a necessity to go to the city, so we would have tried hundreds of different ways to come here, and by chance, eventually we would have found the . . .
Prabhupada: No. We have not tried hundreds of others. There was a plan.
Sudama: But even where does . . . in my mind, if I hear the word "chance," where does chance . . . how does chance come about, if there is such a thing?
Prabhupada: No. The rascal says that I am trying in so many ways; one of them by chance becomes favorable. But I am not working in so many ways. We had a plan, to come here, to preach. So according to that plan, we arranged with this man. And it is not chance; it is all prearranged. Where is that I am trying this way or that way? We are going to preach. There is a plan. So our men go before that, before my reaching there, and they make nice arrangement, nice apartment. Then they receive me. These are not chances. This is all prearranged, plan.
Bhurijana: They say that . . . but they don't acknowledge the plan.
Prabhupada: Why they don't acknowledge? Everything is being done by plan. The rascal who is speaking like that, he is educated by a plan, by his parents. And therefore he is able now to talk nonsense and get the Nobel Prize for talking all these rascals. His education was planned.
Sudama: Just like his book was planned, so now he is given the Nobel Prize. He won't say: "By chance I won."
Prabhupada: Yes. His plan to misguide the people, that is a plan.